Entrepreneur & Mentor
The Power of a Positive Mental Attitude
In the last two parts of training; I keep mentioning about we can born with talents, but we still need to learn the skills. So, I would like to share with you some ways to maintain a positive attitude in your business, regardless if they are already coming naturally to you or not.
1. Surround yourself with positive people.
You might have heard about this old saying – ‘birds of a feather flock together’! It can be viewed in two ways:
Either, people who are similar naturally find each other, or people together in a group become the same over a period of time. You need to surround yourself with positive people as often as you can. Remember! Whom you hang around with will rub off on you! So, if you’re always with negative people, and keep complaining and moaning about everything, you’ll become a complainer or a moaner, and you will see the world as negative as they do. Now, you might think you can stay positive and change them, but that’s not going to happen.
Continue to connect with people who like their work, have new ideas, and are interested in lots of other things besides work. It’ll certainly make you feel better and your whole outlook better too.
2. Fill your mind with positive input.
This work the same way with people you are around and change you to be more like them. Basically, is just what you feed to your mind.
I would recommend you to listen to positive music, or positive mindset audiobooks when you are driving. Read as many books as you can for encouragement. Watch positive videos and listen to podcasts or anything to help you to improve your positive attitude.
If you understand what you eat is good for your body, the right attitude for your mind is what you feed it.
3. Control your language.
No, I am not talking about swearing here. I am talking about the words you use when you are speaking and thinking. Your structure of a language affects your point of view, how you see the world and the way you think. Every day, both your thought and the spoken words you used can have an add an effect on how you think about yourself, your work, and anyone around you. Just a silly example of the difference between how you see your day as filled with tasks, or filled with opportunities. Just be aware of the what and the how you choose to think and speak.
4. Create a routine for the day.
You know what, we keep talking about creating a daily routine for yourself and your team. Is a good habit, right? A morning routine is especially good because most people are more alert and awake. So, create a routine in the morning to deal with the most important tasks. Most of us usually get tired by the end of the day, so don’t leave those tough or difficult work at the latter part of the day. Taking a regular break at the right time is also important. Give you time to look back and recharge yourself.
5. Be nice to other people
I really do enjoy being kind to people because it really makes me happy. I created this habit a long time ago always being easygoing, and nice to people around me. I do this automatically nowadays and the effect of that always makes me feel good and likewise, people around me feel the same too.
If your work is difficult and you can’t get away from that, and if you’re finding a positive attitude about the work itself is a challenge, then, I would highly recommend you to be nice and kind to the people around your work; like your customers and your team members, soon you will see the difference of how you feel from the reaction of the people you work with.
Just be nice and be kind and most importantly be open-minded.
6. Don’t rely on an outside source of positivity
Always carry a tool bag of positive attitude with you wherever you go. Treat it as your survival kit. Inside your tool bag of positive attitude, whether is a sentence, or just keywords to help you to trigger off your positive thinking and put you back on the right path of positive attitude. When you are feeling down, don’t rely on someone else or a situation to motivate you. Keep using your tool bag of positive attitude like your immune system, it automatically helps to eliminate any negativities.
7. Create a high point in each day and week
Do you remember when you are due for holiday and the days leading up to it always is one of the high points right? It helps you to prepare all necessary for your holiday and you’re always looking forward to doing it. All the tasks you need to do, you are motivated to do.
Each day and week if you create the same high points, it will certainly help you get through tasks. Otherwise, you will find tasks draining, dragging and even unbearable. This is why taking breaks while you are working is important.
Use the high points to do all the less important and urgent tasks.
8. Assume responsibility, and choose your response.
Refusing to take responsibility for your actions and your situation, or not taking control of how you respond, kills a positive attitude immediately.
After all, if something happens and you’re at fault or in some way responsible, refusing to acknowledge it means you can’t correct the behaviour and it will happen again, and you also set yourself up for a victimhood mindset in which things happen to you.
You will be more positive seeing life as something you have some control over rather than at the mercy of fate. Think of it as an equation: event + response = outcome. How you respond has an effect on the outcome, even when events are out of your control.
9. Prepare your reaction to known problems ahead of time
You will find this happens all the time whether it’s customers, team members or friends and family, there’s something in your day-to-day tasks that you are not looking forward to it. Someone said something you know will upset you. You have to decide in advance that you will not allow this to happen.
If a customer always changes their mind, expect it. If a team member failed to carry out their tasks, let it be. If friends and family make negative remarks about your business, ignore them. Just choose to be calm about it and don’t let it bother you. Train yourself to look at those people who are driving you nuts in a different way. Tell yourself that maybe they are having a bad day or they are stressed about themselves, you must not allow them to add any negative thoughts about you.
10. Take a deep breath
This attitude I use all the time, which I’ve learnt a long time ago. Breathing deeply can trick your body into a calming stage. Calm people usually have better attitudes.
When things happened and you find yourself getting a bad attitude, find a place where you can be alone, and do some deep breathing exercises. Not only just help to reduce stress, but it helps you clear your mind and see the situation in a different way.
11. Remember that no one owes you anything
One of the worst killers of a good attitude is going through life thinking people owe you. The truth is no one owes you anything.
If you are believing life is not fair to you. Everyone is set up to blame you for anything. You feel like a victim, feeling anger and feeling no fun in life. All these negativities in your mind are because you think the world owes you.
How do you get rid of that kind of attitude? You have to train and tell yourself
1. It’s up to me to make things happen.
2. Hard work is always bringing me good things.
3. I have to be willing to accept change quickly.
4. When things are difficult, I still keep going and never give up.
If these four concepts are in your head constantly, you’re not going to be feeling sorry for yourself in negativity; and waiting for the world to do something for you.
12. Stop complaining
Remember earlier I mentioned how you need to control your language? That obviously covers complaining as well.
If people around you complain a lot, stay away from them. When the moment comes, you’re about to complain, try to see the situation in a positive way or in a different light. When you have a habit of complaining, you are seeing everything in a negative way and building a longer unhappy road for yourself to travel.
13. Embrace laughing
Believe me or not, laughing is free! Laughing is good for your positive attitude, and of course, it helps you feel much better. Who doesn’t enjoy a good laugh anyway?
Laugh and humour are especially good when things go wrong or in an embarrassing situation. I am sure we’ll all love to see someone totally messed up something, but managed to find humour in the situation he is in. Be that guy! Try to find humour and laugh wherever you can.
I am always a happy-go-lucky guy and always enjoy laughter and humour, but as long as we understand that laughing with people is different from laughing at them. Never joke about others to get a laugh at their expense.
14. Be curious and embrace learning
When someone has a closed-minded attitude, they will learn nothing and are usually negative as well. So, new changes, new ideas or any additional tasks they will find extremely difficult.
The best way is to be a person always curious about things and willing to learn with an open-minded attitude. Then, you are forward-looking and want to understand instead of closing your mind off.
This kind of attitude really resonated with me when I first arrived in England to grow up or blow-up donkey years ago. I don’t have many qualifications and I was struggling to understand English. But because I am always curious about things I don’t know and always open myself to learn. So, I found my struggle and growth are getting easier and easier. This helps me so much to where I am today.
15. Look to the long-term instead of short-term
Sometimes, when you are finding a challenging situation, finding it difficult to get the result in the short term, you need to adjust your mindset and attitude to look in the long term.
Is it a bad idea to make decisions heavily based on short-term results? This kind of habit tends to feed a negative attitude, and you can’t see the bigger picture. Usually, short-term results don’t last. Looking in the long-term makes your current challenge much smaller because you can see the bigger picture with a better outcome at the end of the day. The results from the long-term do last.
16. Fake it until you make it
We are not going to have a smooth day all the time. We might not like some of the tasks we do. The reality is we don’t always feel the emotion we want, but sitting around waiting for the right emotion to come certainly will not happen. The solution is we have to fake it until the real emotion arrives.
For example, if you don’t feel excited about doing a presentation? Fake it! I promised you more often than not, the real emotion will show up. You’re not going to feel super excited and positive every day, but don’t let that stop you and goes along with it, anyway. Drive your emotions; don’t let them drive you.
I really hope all these hints and tips can help you to set yourself in a positive attitude mode all the time. To achieve that you need to act on them consistently. You don’t have to do everything in one go. Go through these learning materials over and over again and pick the one most important to you first. Once you created that habit, then you can move on to the next one and so for.